Impact of Discrimination Identity Development

For this discussion, choose just ONE of the following options. Please copy and paste the title of the option you are selecting at the beginning of your response.

Option A
Advice on Identity Development
Respond to just one of the following scenarios:
1. Provide advice to parents who want to nurture their teenager’s identity development. In addition, describe parenting practices that you think may be associated with a foreclosed or diffused identity status. Be sure to support your thoughts and ideas by referring to information from the text and/or other scholarly sources that you use.
2. Provide advice to high school personnel for nurturing students’ identity development. What teaching practices, school services, and activities would be helpful? Reflecting on your own adolescence, in what ways did your high school experience influence your identity development? Be sure to support your thoughts and ideas by referring to information from the text and/or other scholarly sources that you use.

Option B
Impact of Discrimination on Identity Development
Children and adolescents are constantly bombarded on all sides by messages from society (e.g., parents, peers, schools, and the media) about what and how they should be. This socialization process includes direct and indirect messages, often biased and stereotypical, about what is considered “normal,” “good,” “ideal,” “acceptable,” etc. in our society. When people fall outside the norm (e.g., their behavior does not follow the “rules” of society), they are at risk for experiencing prejudice and discrimination or for being mistreated by others simply because they are different in some way from the norm.

Chapter 10 (and Chapter 11 if you’d like to look ahead) touches on different aspects of identity. Choose one of these aspects of identity, and share your thoughts about how stereotypes, prejudice, and/or the experience of discrimination with regard to this aspect of identity may impact identity development in adolescents. What are some of the social, psychological, and/or physical consequences of being different from the norm?

Your response should be 2-3 solid paragraphs. Be sure to support your thoughts and ideas by referring to information from the text and/or other scholarly sources that you use. This prompt is intentionally broad because if you choose it, I would like you to have the freedom to emphasize what you’d like to in your response.